


The Rising Road

by vaguenotion



Series: Blood Makes The Knife Holy [3]
Category: Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Explicit Language, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Lots of liberties taken with fantasy politics, Whump, character tags will be added as we go to avoid spoilers, no beta reading we die like mne, only rapunzel and eugene are in a relationship, otherwise oops all friendships, surprise things are still bad
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-17 15:28:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29102565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaguenotion/pseuds/vaguenotion
Summary: Six months after the Red Curse, Corona is being boxed into war under increasingly dire circumstances. Desperate to right the ship before it’s too late, Rapunzel turns to Varian for help, who believes he might have the solution. With no time and no guarantee of success, they set out to try and save Corona—again—and find themselves in the middle of a sprawling web of conspiracy and betrayal that started decades before.In the midst of new allies and old enemies, one warning rings clear: you have to be careful who you trust.
Relationships: Eugene Fitzherbert | Flynn Rider & Varian, Eugene Fitzherbert | Flynn Rider/Rapunzel, Rapunzel & Varian (Disney)
Series: Blood Makes The Knife Holy [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1677211
Comments: 42
Kudos: 116





	1. In The Shadow Of

**Author's Note:**

> Why, hello again. We seem to keep running into each other. 
> 
> This story is the third in a series, and while it will not reference the first story as much, the second story proceeding this leads directly into the start of this fic. I would recommend starting with The Before And After. 
> 
> I mean, you're your own keeper. If you don't want to read them, that's your prerogative; live your truth, bud. But I warned ya.
> 
> This story is set six months after the end of The Before And After, and things have not been going great for Corona. As such, this chapter is high in exposition fiber. An excellent source of Vitamin Context, if you will. And it's necessary, because guys? This is gunna be one heck of a roadtrip. 
> 
> Seatbelts, everyone!

Rapunzel knew a plague ship when she saw one.

It appeared at the mouth of the harbor only minutes after sunset, its lanterns lit a sickly yellow. It drifted to a stop just inside the bay, anchor dropped, sails furled and stowed. No one left it, and no one approached. Her stomach sank ever lower as she watched, realization settled across her shoulders. She could only imagine the sounds of chaos and confusion down on the docks.

Corona needed the supplies on that ship. Even from the window where she stood, Rapunzel could see the ship’s hull was low in the water, weighed down with the oil and coal that they desperately required. For a ship to have gotten through the blockade, past all the pirate vessels off their shores, only for it to arrive with yellow lanterns hung… 

They couldn’t risk introducing sickness to Corona. Not with winter bearing down on them, and their supplies already so meager. Rapunzel knew with deep certainty that the cargo on that ship was as good as lost. 

She sank onto the window seat below her and turned her unseeing eyes away from the harbor. Fear was twisting in her stomach, cold and nauseous. She liked to think of herself as an optimist, felt fairly confident that after everything she’d been through she was one. But how was she supposed to find the silver lining now?

Eugene appeared beside her, having seen his wife’s reaction to the scene below. He frowned down toward the harbor, his expression a journey from confusion to dread that matched how she felt. 

“Damnit,” he muttered, as the distant sound of bells reached them, an alarm to signal that a plague ship had been identified. “Is that the Acheron?”

“It has to be,” Rapunzel said quietly. “No other ships have been able to get past the pirates.”

A hand settled on her shoulder, warm and reassuring. She didn’t look up as Eugene eased onto the window seat beside her, not until he took both of her hands in his and leaned into her line of sight. “Hey,” he said, in that reassuring tone that reminded her of warm honey, “we’re going to get through this. The people of Corona are tough as nails, we’ll figure it out.”

Not long ago, she would have smiled and agreed, happy to hear someone say what she’d been telling herself all along. But after so many disappointments, so many missed ships, Rapunzel almost wanted to argue with him. Because it wasn’t just the lack of coal and oil as they headed into winter. It wasn’t just the pirate blockade, or the bandits along the borders, or the sabotaged crops. 

It was the fact that any day now, Corona could declare war. 

Rapunzel forced herself to draw a deep breath. She squeezed Eugene’s hands, lifting her gaze and searching his eyes for any signs of uncertainty. In spite of Eugene’s efforts to appear confident, she could see the cracks in his facade, and the doubt just beneath. He needed her optimism just as badly as she needed his, and she wasn’t sure how to give it to him.

“I know,” she answered after too long a pause. “But at this rate, people are going to die no matter  _ what _ happens.”

To this, Eugene had no reassuring smile. It was inarguable; if it wasn’t the cold or hunger that did it, it would be the toll of war. And if anyone brought the sickness ashore from the Acheron, that would only be one more contender in the onslaught of dangers before them. 

Hell, he couldn’t even reassure her that her father would make the right decision. After all, Frederic was fast becoming the loudest proponent for war on the council. 

“We should go down there,” Rapunzel sighed, “before he hears about the ship and does something rash.”

Eugene nodded and stood, offering her a hand up. “He’ll listen to you,” he replied, his confidence not sounding entirely genuine. “He has so far.”

Rapunzel stood and laced her fingers into his, anxiety tightening her throat. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

-

Varian was an unequivocal  _ genius. _

He had been thrilled about discoveries before, had felt the electric rush of excitement up his spine time and again, but it never lost its edge. When this one hit, it was only by some miracle that he didn’t spill his drink all over the book he was reading; that’s how quickly he’d jolted upright in his seat. 

Varian slammed his mug down, sloshing some warm cocoa onto the tabletop, and leaned over the book with wide eyes. Was this correct? If it was true, then that meant… He would need to take this book with him. This book, and that one, and the three over there, and the four scroll tubes he had dusted off that morning, and-- 

This could solve  _ everything. _

“Stan,” he blurted, not looking up from the small note that he’d found tucked into the book’s pages. “Can you-- do you know where Rapunzel is?”

Varian pulled his eyes away from the book, looking toward the guard in question. The man had been snoozing, reclined in a nearby chair and appreciating his quiet assignment. He startled awake badly, snorting and flailing momentarily before he could remember where he was. He looked toward Varian the way one might look at a two-headed horse. “What?”

The alchemist was already moving, wedging the note back into the book and flipping it shut. “I need your help carrying these,” he said, stacking the books within reach together and gesturing toward the others. “We have to find Rapunzel.”

Stan rubbed at his eyes for a moment before smoothing his fingers down his mustache. “How many,” he asked, still dazed.

Varian gestured again toward the books he needed. “Those there, and um… Well, actually,” he paused, frowning at the collection, “I guess we only need this book and those scrolls… So nevermind, I think I’ve got it.”

“No, no.” Stan stood, drawing a deep breath in through his nose to wake himself up. “It’s my job to make sure you don’t strain your shoulder. Just tell me what to carry.”

The thrum of excitement in Varian’s veins dulled, if only a little bit. He appreciated Stan, and was grateful for the help, but the man seemed too eager to help at every turn. All of the guards did, especially the ones who had been cursed. After six months, it was starting to get awkward.

Varian bit down on the impulse to tell Stan to go back to sleep. He was the one who had woken him up, after all, and the man wasn’t going to take no for an answer. The alchemist glanced again at the pile of books and decided on a compromise. 

“Okay. Can you bring these ones here to the lab for me, then?”

“Right away,” Stan agreed, visibly happy for something to do. He stepped up to the table and began to stack whatever was within reach, including books the alchemist didn’t need. Varian thought better than to correct him. 

“Thanks,” he said instead, gathering the book and scrolls he needed in his own arms before turning to leave. “And, uh, don’t touch anything down there, yeah?”

The man laughed once, humorlessly. “You don’t need to tell me twice. Pete’s skin is still stained blue.”

Varian could only offer him a shrug, stiff as his left shoulder was. “Hey, I warned him.”

“You always warn him, and he always manages to get into something.” Stan hefted a stack of books up, grunting with exertion. “Maybe this time he’ll finally learn.”

“I’m not holding out hope,” Varian replied, returning Stan’s knowing smile. “Thanks again.”

“You sure you don’t need me to carry anything for you?”

The old wound in Varian’s shoulder tweaked in protest. “I’m sure,” he replied, before turning and leaving the study as quickly as he could.

That particular evening, the castle smelled like baking bread and cedarwood smoke. The usual bustle of staff acted as obstacles in the back hallways as Varian hurried by, returning nods and greetings as he went. He still wasn’t entirely used to it; Varian had always been one shade of pariah or another, from the day he had first blown something up at the tender age of six. To have so many people greet him warmly and ask after his health was…

Well, not off-putting, exactly. But he wasn’t sure that he entirely liked it. 

It was the curse, Varian knew. When he’d taken over the foci, everyone with red eyes had been flooded with his guilt and gratitude and regret, and whatever else he had packed that spell with. It was the lingering taste on their tongues after the curse had been broken, the emotional hangover that stalked them for several days afterwards. Everyone who had been cursed had an intimate understanding of how Varian felt in regards to his past transgressions, and it didn’t seem to be wearing off.

A large part of Varian wished they’d all move on. He didn’t know how to react to strangers expressing understanding or pity or affection. He didn’t know what to do with their sympathies. 

“And where are you off to now,” Old Lady Crowley said, stepping into his path and nearly causing him to stumble and fall. Varian only barely corrected his balance, scrambling to keep his hold on all the scrolls in his arms, before she continued. “The hot water in the laundry room is still on the fritz.”

Her grumpy demeanor, unchanged even after everything, was a port in a storm. Varian had grown to appreciate the old bat in ways he’d never thought possible. “I told you already,” he replied, glancing over the top of her head down the hallway, eager to keep moving, “the dial is broken, not the heater. You can still get hot water.”

“I can’t tell how hot it is without the dial,” the old woman gruffed, crossing her arms and planting herself in the middle of the hallway. Varian frowned down at her. 

“You never knew how hot the water was  _ before _ I installed the boilers,” he said, “and yet, laundry has been getting done here for generations. Now can you please--”

“If it’s so easy to fix, then come in and fix it,” Crowley shot back. “Should be easy for a wizard.”

Varian blinked. “I am  _ not,” _ he said stiffly, “a  _ wizard.” _

“You saved the kingdom with magic, didn’t you?”

“Once,” the young man shot back. “I did magic once! And I’m not fixing the dial right now,  _ and _ I have to go! Now please move!”

“Bah,” Crowley barked, planting her hands on her hips, “what’s more important than laundry?”

Suddenly without patience for her attitude, Varian stepped around her before she could block his path again. “Just about everything,” he answered, dodging as she swung at him in irritation. “Just use the water without the dial!”

He was already booking it down the hallway, the collection of precious knowledge barely contained in his arms. He wouldn’t let himself be distracted from this discovery.

“Some wizard you are,” Crowley called after him, shaking her fist. 

_ “Not a wizard,” _ Varian called back, before vanishing through a doorway and around a corner, leaving the old woman to her grumbling.

-

“Pittsford is the problem,” Councilwoman Heitz declared, bringing her fist down on the arm of her chair hard. “Whatever alliance they’ve formed with Equis  _ has _ to be a violation of the peace accords between the Seven Kingdoms!”

“We have no proof of Equis having such an alliance,” Councilman Ruthers replied, his diplomatic facade strained from fatigue. “As such, we cannot act under the assumption that one exists.”

“I’m not a child, Arther,” Heitz replied hotly, “don’t patronize me with what I already know. There’s clearly collusion going on between them to prevent our import of coal from reaching our shores, and it should be evidence enough for us to engage our military without being the first aggressor!”

Rapunzel took a deep breath, rolling out her jaw to try and ease some of the tension that had been clenching her teeth together. Her eyes roamed across the war table in the center of the group, its surface a beautiful wooden inlay depicting a map of the seven kingdoms. The kingdom of Corona was marked with a golden sun, set into the wood by a craftsman long ago. Scattered across the map just off the coastline from their shores, wooden markers indicated every known spot that pirates had intercepted trade ships.

“That doesn’t change the fact that we haven’t had a single captured pirate confess to an alliance with Equis,” Ruthers argued. “The peace accords were not written for unsubstantiated claims! Ingvaar will not accept a  _ gut feeling, _ Maria.”

Further into the table, along Corona’s easter border, other wooden blocks marked a string of bandit attacks. Each incident had targeted supply shipments, whether the bandits had practical use for the goods or not. 

To Rapunzel’s right, her father was trying to rub a headache away. From the way he was seated in his chair, it looked like the world was resting on his shoulders. His eyes were fixed on a section of the tabletop map that was marked off with chalk, in the eastern farmlands of Corona. That September, only a month ago, a terrible fire had sparked from seemingly nowhere. No storm had caused it, no drought or unexplained bolt of lightning. It had burned through dozens of fields before it was finally extinguished. Among the ash and char, there wasn’t a single salvageable stalk of wheat.

“What would you have us do,” Heitz persisted. “Arther, you’re a reasonable man. We cannot continue to let this assault on our trade hinder us! How are we supposed to keep our citizens warm without coal for fires, or oil for lamps? Pittsford’s alleged ‘shortage’ has come at too inopportune a time for it to be coincidence.”

“I am not arguing with that,” Ruthers replied sternly. “I think it’s obvious to everyone in this room that our string of bad luck is manufactured. But without evidence, we can’t expect to sway our allies into helping us. If we attack without their support, Equis will trigger its own treaties, and we’ll be outnumbered!”

The princess drew another deep breath. She had heard these arguments a hundred times since July, and still the council couldn’t reach a decision. All they could agree on was that they were being boxed inevitably toward war.

Heitz was right. The pirates, the bandits, the fire, all of them were a strain on their supply lines, but the killing blow had been Pittsford. The kingdom was known almost exclusively for their coal mines and their big egos. In the middle of summer, Pittsford had announced that they had less coal to export than years prior. The reason for this was inconsistent, but it drove up demand either way, and soon the ports in Corona had begun to ration what little they were able to get. 

That wasn’t to say that the ports were busy. With the surge in pirate attacks, fewer and fewer ships were making it into Corona’s harbors. By mid-summer, around the time the coal shortage began, other nations grew wary of losing their ships to the now-treacherous waters, and had started to lessen the frequency of their shipments. 

That was when the tension first started to form in Frederic’s shoulders. It was the height of summer; Corona was flush green with crops and resources, as beautiful and unassuming as always. But from the King’s throne, he could see only the encroaching winter, and if the shortages continued, it would be a cold one indeed. 

His grim predictions had so far come true. The chokehold on Corona’s trade was growing ever tighter, and the citizens were beginning to feel the effects. Rationing, mild at first, was made a priority overnight. If they were going to get through the winter--if they were going to be prepared for war--they would need to save whatever they could. 

The pirates; the coal shortage; the wariness of their allies in trade; the bandits; the fire. None of them could be traced to Equis, and yet it was the shared opinion of everyone in the war room that Trevor had somehow orchestrated them all. After his failed attempt at rising to war back in the spring--after he’d tried to hunt Eugene for sport, and kidnap Varian--he had slunk back to the shadows to scheme again. Of that much, they were all in agreement. 

But if Corona attacked without proof--if they acted on their suspicions without evidence--than Trevor could claim victimhood and wave his own treaties around for help. And in their weakened state, without the resources needed to get through winter, Corona would be ill-prepared for war.

Rapunzel knew what it felt like to be trapped. Gothel’s clawing grip was never far away from her mind, reaching out in the ink of night to rake nightmares through her sleep. She knew what it felt like to be given a terrible ultimatum, knew the strain of an impossible decision. To see her kingdom in such a position, with so many lives at stake… It made her angry in a way she couldn’t describe, especially after everything she had been through to protect it.

She wanted justice; she wanted fairness. She would find neither of them on the stage of war.

“Argue all you want,” Councilwoman Warding cut in, “but the reality is that our most useful ties to Pittsford were through Nigel.” 

Rapunzel snapped to attention as if a bucket of ice water had been upended on her. The advisor’s name shook her from her thoughts, alarm rapidly turning to wariness as her gaze moved back to her father.

Talking about Nigel in any capacity was a brave thing to do. Not because it had been forbidden, but because any evocation of his name brought a dark expression and shortened temper from the king. Six months was not enough time to process a betrayal that was decades in the making. Before her eyes, Frederic’s eyes narrowed, his lip curling around whatever stern thing he was preparing to say. Rapunzel leaned in and spoke first. 

“I know that the kingdom is under a great deal of stress right now,” she said, finding it in herself to sound as diplomatic and patient as she could manage even as she interrupted her father. “And I know the Acheron’s arrival wasn’t the, ah…  _ saving grace _ that we were all hoping it would be. But this kingdom has survived hard times before, and we’ll get through this too. Together,” she emphasized, looking sideways at her father. “Arguing amongst ourselves and assigning blame isn’t going to warm people’s homes or give them courage.”

Councilman Ruthers took a deep breath, though whether it was to summon patience for the problem at hand or for Rapunzel’s optimism, she wasn’t sure. “With all due respect, Princess,” he said, “courage isn’t going to warm homes either.”

“You want to talk about courage?” Heitz cut in. “We are being openly bullied by Equis, and are doing nothing about it! Our inaction makes us look  _ weak, _ which won’t do anything to encourage Ingvaar’s support!”

Rapunzel set her jaw and drew a deep breath through her nose. “War  _ can’t _ be the answer. Our people will be in even worse shape than they’re in now.”

“Not to mention concerns about a naval front,” Ruthers agreed. “If Equis has paid off those bloody pirates to sabotage us, then they’ll have even more ships than usual.”

“So we call on Neserdnia,” Warding said, shrugging as though this were obvious. “With the support of the other kingdoms, Equis doesn’t stand a chance.”

“Which is why they’re attacking us from the shadows like  _ cowards,” _ Heitz growled, slamming her fist once again on the table and causing some of the bandit markers to rattle. 

“Enough,” Frederic announced, deep and commanding. The council fell silent, eyes turning toward him. He hadn’t spoken since the start of the meeting, an intimidating monolith at the head of the table. Rapunzel’s brief interruption had not banished the anger that Nigel’s name had evoked. The princess tensed; they all did.

The decision on what to do ultimately fell to the king. If Frederic wanted war, they would have it; if he was strongly opposed to conflict, the council would have to find an alternative. With each problem that had surfaced over the past six months, the king’s preference had become more and more obvious to everyone in attendance. 

Frederic’s jaw was stiff as he spoke. “We cannot allow a rival kingdom to disrespect us without consequence. If it is obvious to this council that Equis is pulling strings, then it is obvious to Ingvaar and the others. We cannot abide that show of weakness.”

“Dad,” Rapunzel said quietly, unable to stop herself. Frederic only shook his head once, a gentle gesture that landed like a slap. 

“We have searched for months for another option. We have held out for the possibility of peace, only for our enemies to find new ways to attack us.” The king turned to look at her, his eyes impossibly weighted with emotion. “Rapunzel, there is no option left. I cannot allow our people to suffer through a bitter winter when there is action left to be taken.”

“But they’ll suffer even more if we go to war,” Rapunzel countered, forgetting herself as desperation overwhelmed her. “People will die, resources will be spread even thinner, and if we can’t convince Ingvaar and the others to come to our aid, we won’t stand a chance against Equis and whatever allies they win over!”

Across the table, Heitz sat back in her chair and lifted her chin. “We have the automatons.”

Silence followed. Rapunzel’s expression fell blank, surprise making her ears ring. She stared at Heitz, not immediately comprehending what the councilwoman meant. She looked toward her father, only to find the same look of grim certainty on his face. 

“You can’t do that to him,” Rapunzel said quietly. “After everything Varian has been through, asking him to build an army like that--”

“It’s the edge we require,” Heitz interrupted in a firm voice.

“It’s what Trevor tried to  _ enslave him to do,” _ Rapunzel shot back, her shock turning toward anger.  _ “And _ Zhan Tiri. I made Varian our Royal Engineer to help improve the lives of our people, not to build machines of war!”

“You  _ proposed _ his elevation to Royal Engineer,” Ruthers corrected carefully, glancing at the other members of the council that sat around the table. 

“But we confirmed him,” Heitz interrupted, clearly without any patience for Rapunzel’s argument. “With the understanding that his automatons and other inventions may one day help defend our borders.”

Rapunzel stared across the table at the woman. Heitz had always been a spitfire, could always be relied on to suggest action, but never before had Rapunzel thought she was a threat. Suddenly, Heitz’s hostile nature felt sinister. How long had the council been waiting to bring this up?

“That’s not--” Rapunzel started, looking again at her father for backup. She found only a resigned, stern expression. “After everything, you can’t ask him to--”

“Varian is a hero of Corona,” Ruthers said diplomatically, as if he could smooth Rapunzel’s alarm and frustration with a reasoned explanation. “He has more than proven his loyalty to this kingdom. How is this situation any different than the Red Curse?”

“Because you’re asking him to be the bad guy again,” Rapunzel shot back. “You were cursed,  _ all of you. _ You know what those automatons mean to him!”

“This is bigger than one boy’s feelings,” Heitz replied sharply. “People are going to die this winter. It can either be from snow and starvation, or from fighting for a better tomorrow. He’s a smart young man; he’ll understand.”

“You  _ can’t _ ask that of him,” Rapunzel repeated, aiming to sound firm and landing somewhere north of open anger. 

“Rapunzel.” To her right, her father spoke in a softer tone that made her skin crawl. He sounded sympathetic, careful, even reasonable, but it wasn’t because he was going to side with her. Rapunzel knew exactly what that tone meant: he was only trying to soften a blow. 

She turned to look at him, eyes blazing. He didn’t flinch. “It’s not your choice to make,” he said evenly.

The chair she’d been sitting in for the better part of an hour scrapped across the flagstone floor as she stood abruptly. Her heart was hammering, anger and disbelief quickening her breathing. A hundred impulses surged to the front of her mouth, only held back by closed lips and learned composure after years of having to watch what she said around Gothel.

“You’re making a mistake,” she said evenly, so low and certain that she swore she could feel the temperature drop in the room. It didn’t matter; her father held firm, returning her steely look with one of his own. 

Suddenly, she couldn’t stand it. Months of cyclical arguments and worsening news, and still the idea that her father had just chosen war was something she couldn’t abide. All those little kernels of hope she’d held onto, every possibility that they could avoid it, all slipped from her hands like smoke. Here it was: the worst possible outcome. And she was powerless to stop it.

Before anyone could try again to change her mind, Rapunzel turned, and left. She crossed the room in a storm of motion, shoulders hiked to her ears, and pushed her way through the heavy oak doors into the corridor beyond the war room.

She was fully aware of what it looked like: a petulant and naive child who couldn’t accept how the world worked. She didn’t care; some things were worth fighting for. She wasn’t ready to give up on a peaceful solution to their problems, and would work twice as hard if it meant avoiding war. And if she tried absolutely everything, and war was truly the only option left? Then she would find a way for them to accomplish it without forcing Varian into a situation he’d worked so hard to avoid, especially after everything that he’d--

“Rapunzel,  _ there _ you are, oh my  _ god _ you’re hard to find.”

The princess came up short, surprised from her righteous fury by the very person she was brooding over. Turning, she found Varian hurrying toward her from an adjacent hallway, his arms full of scrolls and an especially large book. For an irrational moment, Rapunzel felt a buzz of panic that he had somehow heard what the council had just been discussing. 

Varian looked like the perfect foil of how Rapunzel felt. He had excitement bursting from every seam, a bounce to his posture as if he were too eager to stand still. She hadn’t seen that level of chaotic optimism in him in a long time.

“Varian,” she greeted, not quite able to mask the swirl of anger and urgency she still felt. “Is something wrong?”

If he noticed her strained mood, he didn’t address it. “No,” he replied with a shake of his head, leaning in and lowering his voice. “The opposite. Rapunzel, I found something that could fix this.”

His words did not immediately process. Rapunzel stared at him blankly. “Fix what?”

Varian’s mouth pulled into a smile. It was the kind of conspiratorial look he got whenever he thought of something especially clever, and it hit Rapunzel like fresh air.

“Everything.”


	2. The Momentum Core

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Varian reveals a potential solution. In the castle vault, they hit a roadblock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flash! Boom! Exposition!

Varian wasn’t going to pretend that he knew much about the council. They only convened in times of strife, made up of an assortment of scholars and members of the nobility who the king deemed appropriate. Given the last six months, the council had been in session daily, and Varian had done everything in his power to avoid them. Navigating the emotional fallout of the Red Curse was tricky enough without the added veneer of politics. 

All he needed to know about them, he could glean through the tension in Rapunzel’s shoulders at the end of the day. If they had been productive, she was nearly her usual bubbly self. If they’d spent the day’s session arguing around in circles, Rapunzel looked tired, withdrawn and flat and grateful for any distraction her friends could provide. 

But as Rapunzel led him away from the war room, Varian didn’t need to clock her body language to know it had been a bad session. Through the old oak doors behind them, he could hear the council arguing, their voices a cacophony of anger and disagreement.

“Jeez,” Varian muttered, glancing over his shoulder, “they’re really going at it today. Did something happen?”

Rapunzel did not look back. If anything, she walked a bit faster. “The Acheron arrived.”

“That’s… a good thing, though?”

“It has plague lanterns hung.”

Varian slowed. “Oh,” he answered quietly. “Not a good thing, then.”

Rapunzel chose not to reply. Her silence was confirmation enough.

The alchemist cleared his throat and jogged to get in front of his companion, pivoting to catch her eye. He caught a flash of anger on her face, her glare vanishing into the middle distance, before she looked up and shuttered the expression. “I don’t suppose you found a secret treaty that will diffuse everything that’s going on,” she asked rhetorically, though there was an edge of hope to her words that betrayed her. 

“Nothing like that,” he replied, picking his words hesitantly. “But maybe something better. Have you ever heard of the Momentum Core?”

For a split second, Rapunzel only gave him a flat and unresponsive look. None of her usual spark was there, no curiosity or excitement. And then, as though it had been a mirage in the desert, Varian watched her force a smile onto her face and feign friendly cluelessness. “No?”

A sense of sheepishness crawled up the back of Varian’s neck. He’d seen Rapunzel tired before, seen her angry and righteous, but never this…  _ worn. _ It was nearly enough to make him drop it, to come back and try again after she’d had a chance to rest. Had the Acheron been a more devastating blow than it seemed? Surely they’d get the coal shipment once the illnesses on board were treated. 

But there was something in her eyes, a question she wasn’t asking, and Varian realized something else in the same breath. Rapunzel was exhausted, but she looked at him like he might have the cure-all to pep her back up. Like she could recover her optimism if only she could find it in him.

Instinct told him to fix it. If he could find the right string of words, he could banish the weight that sat on Rapunzel’s shoulders. But Varian had never been especially poetic, and even if he was, he’d have no idea where to begin. The next best thing, he figured, was to show her something worth smiling about.

“Come with me,” he said before he could think better of it. “I’ll tell you on the way.”

Rapunzel took a steadying breath and dipped her chin in agreement. Varian hooked a left at the end of the hallway. 

“I’m going to take a wild guess,” Rapunzel said as she followed blindly, “that this is a Demanitus thing?”

“What makes you think that,” Varian asked with a sly grin, “the name, or the fact that I’m bringing it up in the eleventh hour?”

This earned a small laugh from the princess, a sound that Varian was immediately grateful to hear. As they walked, he struggled to adjust the scrolls in his arms before sighing and glancing at her. 

“Here,” he offered, “grab that scroll tube right there. The one with the red cap.”

Rapunzel carefully plucked it from the collection as they walked, popping it open and sliding the old dusty parchment out. “It looks like it hasn’t been opened in a thousand years,” she observed flatly.

“Yeah, I didn’t really bother dusting it off,” Varian admitted, watching a few strands of cobweb strain and break as the princess unfurled the yellowed scroll and held it open in front of her like a map. At the sight of it, the excitement of Varian’s discovery crept back into his chest, banishing what was left of his hesitation.

“Okay,” he started, taking a breath and trying to organize his thoughts. “So based on my research, the Momentum Core was a theoretical project that Demanitus wrote about extensively. He first mentioned it in his own journals--you know, the ones we recovered from his tomb? And then…” With difficulty, Varian shuffled the objects in his arm to emphasize the heavy tome against his chest. “He wrote about it here, in this book. See, every time he talked about it, it was always this theoretical project, not a thing he’d actually completed. But here.”

He nodded his chin toward the open scroll in Rapunzel’s hands. It was covered in drawings: in the corner, a small illustration was made blotchy by an over-filled quill and too much hatching. In the center of the parchment, drawn more to scale and in far more exacting detail, the same object was depicted: a mechanical sphere, made up of various panels and cogs. Measurements and notes were scrawled around the drawings in both the common tongue and that perplexing cipher that Demanitus often used. 

“This is a blueprint for it,” Rapunzel prompted, glancing first at Varian and then down the hallway as they walked. 

“It’s a blueprint,” he confirmed, with a broad smile pulling onto his face, “of a prototype that he  _ actually made.” _

The princess stared at him. He waited for her to reach his level of excitement, and when her expression didn’t change, Varian’s eyebrows shifted in question. 

“You haven’t told me what it does,” Rapunzel prompted, a quiet and fond smile slipping into her face, cracking through her gloom like the sun at dawn.

“Oh. Oh! Well, the Momentum Core is-- here, let me show you.”

Shifting the weight in his arms, Varian indicated another scroll for Rapunzel to take. She laughed, visibly charmed by Varian’s disorganization, before carefully rolling the scroll in her hands back up and sliding it into the tube. By the time she took the second one from Varian’s arms and replaced it with the original, they had turned again and arrived at the top of a staircase. 

Rapunzel glanced ahead to ensure she didn’t fall before unfurling the second scroll. It had another version of the same blueprint, this one with more written notes. 

“The Momentum Core is an energy source,” Varian explained, barely glancing at the steps as they descended. “Demanitus wanted to create something that could sustain his inventions without the use of coal or magic, and this was it. He even got so far as to create an early prototype, but it--” he paused, glancing ahead to check his footing as they descended. “See, the prototype requires a conduit, something that can pass an adequate voltage back and forth through it without being destroyed. The whole point of this device was to create an eternal energy source, and the  _ only _ thing that Demantius couldn't figure out was that conduit.”

For a moment, Rapunzel didn’t seem sure how to react. Varian’s enthusiasm had returned in force, but she had spent too long marinating in anxiety and worry to immediately reflect it. 

“That’s fascinating, Varian,” she began carefully, “but if Demanitus never completed the project, how does it help us?”

Varian’s smile only sharpened. It seemed to catch her off guard, as if she hadn’t expected him to have an answer. “Because,” he said, “Demanitus didn’t have samples of the black rocks to use. Rapunzel, they’re  _ unbreakable, _ and can withstand the stress of the both mechanical  _ and _ magical weathering without any kind of damage. If we can get the prototype, and test out some of the black rocks as the conduit, I think it could complete the project!”

Rapunzel looked at Varian for a moment, processing the information. As they reached the bottom of the stairs, the princess slowed to a stop to study the parchment more closely. “And how much power could it produce,” she asked, glancing up at him through her bangs.

Varian stopped and turned toward her, bouncing on his heels with an eagerness to keep moving. “According to his writings about it? One core could power my entire heating system in the castle.  _ Forever.” _

For a moment, Rapunzel didn’t react. He could see the gears turning behind her eyes, the glum fog receding as she started to catch up to his line of logic. “No more coal,” she said quietly, her gaze moving to the middle distance somewhere between them. 

Unable to stay still any longer, Varian started moving again, looking over his shoulder as she followed after him. “It would require infrastructure to rig up multiple cores for the rest of the kingdom,” he admitted. “I mean, we’d need some sort of… grid, or something, uh, like underground pipes with conductive material that could transmit the power from the core outward, but… I mean, look, it’d take some work, but it’s  _ something.” _

Without pulling herself out of her far-off gaze, Rapunzel came up alongside him and set her hand on Varian’s shoulder. “We could mobilize the resources of an army to build it quickly,” she muttered. “If we can keep people warm without coal, we could ride out the winter.”

Varian felt a smile tug at his mouth, relieved that she was clearly catching up. “Exactly. Well, and not only that, I mean, the applications for this kind of technology are endless. I actually had this idea that we could use it to fuel artificial light sources, and--”

Rapunzel snapped out of her daydream and stopped short. She looked right at him, her gaze startlingly intense. “How quickly could you build something like this?”

Stalled only a few feet ahead of her, Varian’s excitement faltered, dragged back to the reality of what he was proposing. He pulled a face. “Well, that’s the thing. I found Demanitus’s notes about this almost a year ago now, but the problem is that the schematics just aren’t specific enough. He never made detailed notes about what materials he used for all the components, only about what  _ didn’t _ work. Demanitus lived so long ago, I can’t be sure I could recreate the prototype from just these blueprints.  _ But,” _ he tacked on quickly when Rapunzel’s expression began to shutter again.

“But,” she repeated slowly, prompting him to continue. 

“But, I was reading up on it today to try and find any evidence of what metal alloys he could have used, and you know what I found tucked into this book?” Varian tilted his armful of materials toward her, letting the top of the book lean her way. Sticking out from between the yellowed pages was a triangle of fresh paper, the crisp white corner of a notecard. He nodded at it, offering it up to her. 

Rapunzel looked between the slip of paper and Varian. There was a wariness on her face, clear as day. How many times had she gotten her hopes up before, Varian wondered, only for it to fall through?

His smile shifted from excited to sympathetic. Varian was no stranger to failed experiments; the hesitation to be hopeful was something he knew intimately. “Go on,” he said quietly. “Take it.”

Carefully, Rapunzel reached up and slid the notecard out from between the pages of the book. Varian watched her face closely as she studied the card, confusion slowly giving way to realization. “This is a catalog card,” she said cautiously. “For the royal vault.”

Varian smiled, warm and bright. He nodded slowly. “It’s for the prototype of the Momentum Core,” he confirmed. “Rapunzel, Demanitus actually made one. And it’s  _ here.” _

Rapunzel’s expression slowly brighted. Her shoulders, tight with stress, began to lower as surprise and realization washed over her. “Which means you could rebuild it using the original prototype for reference,” she ventured, her eyebrows rising.

The alchemist tempered his grin, mirroring the awe in her voice. “I think I could.”

“We wouldn’t have to go to war,” Rapunzel said quietly, the realization of this discovering chasing her worries away like light chasing shadow. 

Varian nodded, struggling to suppress his smile. “If we can take care of ourselves throughout the winter, then we buy the council time to meet with the other kingdoms and discuss the pirates and bandits.”

“We wouldn’t give Trevor what he wants,” Rapunzel concluded, the volume of her voice halved.

Gradually, a smile began to pull back onto the princess’s face. After so many months of worsening news, the idea that they might have a solution was dizzying. “Varian, you’re a  _ genius.” _

“This, I know,” the alchemist answered solemnly, feigning humility. Rapunzel reached a hand forward and gripped his good shoulder, giving him a little shake and nearly dislodging the collection of scrolls from his arms.

“This is brilliant,” she said, louder and more fiercely. “Varian, this could solve everything!”

“Well,” he answered, deflating only a little, “I mean, it won’t bring the wheat from that fire back, but--”

But Rapunzel was hardly listening, buoyed by the unexpected solution. She grabbed Varian’s elbow and began pulling him across the room, in the approximate direction of the royal vault. “We’ll go right now,” she declared. “We’ll get the prototype and bring all of what you found to the council, and they’ll have to listen, and--”

Stumbling to keep up, Varian tightened his arms around the scrolls and book. “Woah, wait, hold on,” he countered, “I want to make sure I can actually build it first!”

This only prompted the princess to slow to half-speed. She looked over her shoulder at him, releasing his elbow and smiling like the sun. “Even if you can’t build it right away,” she said, “even if you can’t build it  _ at all, _ this is still amazing! You get that, right? Varian, this is the hope that Corona needs right now!”

“Well, I mean, ideally I would be able to build it,” he muttered in reply, almost offended at the notion that he might fail. Rapunzel didn’t seem to notice. They had been growing steadily closer to the hallway that housed the vault, and with each step, Varian’s excitement was beginning to feel more and more like nerves.

He knew how much was riding on this idea working. He understood the stakes in the kind of abstract way that large-scale problems required, and had hunted for a solution tirelessly. But something about Rapunzel’s desperate relief made him worry; if this didn’t work, would he be doing more harm than good?

Ahead of him, Rapunzel was moving with the unstoppable confidence of a tsunami. How desperately had she been needing good news? What exactly had happened with the council?

Varian set his jaw and drew in a breath with every intention of asking, but as they rounded the corner into one of the final stretches of hallway before the vault, a door flew open and an unexpected red jacket suddenly appeared inches in front of his face. 

The alchemist stumbled to a stop. The question he was preparing to ask Rapunzel escaped his throat in the form of a jumbled cry. In his flailing attempt at not running into the sudden obstacle, Varian over-corrected and began to tip backwards, his arms pinwheeling out for balance, sending the scrolls and book from his arms. 

Two large gloved hands gripped him by the upper arms, steadying him before he could fall. With wide eyes, Varian blinked up at the man before him.

Eugene Fitzherbert looked back, equally startled.

“Eugene,” Rapunzel cried, unable to temper her excitement, “perfect timing!”

The captain glanced at his wife with raised eyebrows, but whether it was because of his sudden arrival or because of how happy she looked, Varian couldn’t tell. “Uh, hey,” he greeted inelegantly, looking back toward Varian. He was still holding the alchemist by the arms. “You okay?”

Rapunzel, who had been several yards ahead down the hallway, rushed back and stopped beside them, her smile entirely too toothy. “We’re great,” she answered, “Eugene, Varian has some  _ amazing _ news!”

Eugene’s eyes pivoted back toward Varian. His younger companion looked at him flatly. “I do,” Varian agreed. “It’s that I can stand on my own.”

With a blink, Eugene released him. Varian rolled out his shoulders, trying to hide the tightening expression as his bad shoulder protested. 

“No, it’s-- Oh, shoot, Varian, sorry,” Rapunzel said, suddenly realizing that the scrolls were all over the floor. She squatted and began to pick them up. On autopilot, both Eugene and Varian followed suit. “There might be an old Demanitus device that can solve everything!”

“It could solve the coal problem,” Varian corrected, his nerves sparking into anxiety. “Potentially.”

“And solving the coal problem will solve other problems,” Rapunzel agreed stubbornly. “Here, look!”

Balancing on the balls of her heels, Rapunzel unfurled one of the scrolls that Varian had had her open only a few hallways ago. She turned it toward Eugene, who stared at it blankly. “See this?” she asked, pushing it toward him like it might help him process the image faster. “This can replace coal. And it’s in the vault!”

“The  _ prototype _ is in the vault,” Varian clarified quickly. The hesitancy that had been bubbling up with Rapunzel suddenly felt like embarrassment in front of Eugene. If he was wrong and only Rapunzel knew, that was one thing, but more people knowing meant more witnesses to his failure if his theory proved incorrect. It meant more people with crushed hopes, because of him.

“And Varian can use it to try and build an actual working model,” Rapunzel said. She seemed completely unaware of his growing hesitation, her own eager nature propelling her forward. “Using the black rocks as a conduit!”

Eugene looked back and forth between the two of them, his eyebrows elevated. After a pause, in which Rapunzel vibrated with excitement and Varian wilted with regret, the captain of the guard plucked up the last of the scrolls off the floor and stood, prompting them to do the same. 

“I have no idea what that means,” he admitted. “But it sounds good?”

“It’s amazing,” Rapunzel answered so quickly that Varian got the impression she’d been holding her breath in anticipation of his reply. “Come to the vault with us!”

Still clearly trying to catch up, Eugene glanced toward Varian with a silent question on his face. The alchemist looked back helplessly. “How do we know it’s in the vault?”

“This,” Rapunzel said, holding out the catalog card she’d been clutching since Varian had revealed it to her. With a free hand, Eugene pinched the card between two fingers and squinted at it. 

“In my defense,” Varian said quietly, “this is all theoretical. Like, really well researched, but… I mean, there’s a chance it won’t work.”

His disclaimer seemed to fall on deaf ears. Before Rapunzel could turn more of her insistent positivity Varian’s way, Eugene frowned and glanced up at them. “What is this card doing outside of the vault,” he asked. “The clerks keep these under pretty strict lock and key.”

Varian could only shrug at him with his good shoulder. “I found it in this book,” he offered lamely. 

This didn’t seem to satisfy the captain, but Rapunzel had waited long enough. “Come on,” she insisted, stepping around behind both of them and placing a hand on Varian’s upper back and Eugene’s shoulder. She gently pushed them in the direction of the vault, her smile growing playful. “No time like the present to save the kingdom!”

“No pressure,” Varian muttered, allowing himself to be led along. 

The last time Varian had been anywhere near the castle vault, he’d technically been robbing it. He had no idea what the hallways leading to it looked like, since he and Rapunzel had come in through the tunnels, but it didn’t stop the spike of anxiety in his stomach as they rounded the final corner and came upon the primary entrance. Somewhere deep in his bones, Varian knew he didn’t want to be down here, knew that even after everything he likely wasn’t allowed anywhere near it. At least, if  _ he _ was in the King’s shoes, he’d ban the kid who stole the sunflower from ever going down there again.

Which is why he needed Rapunzel. Even if it was an uncomfortable parallel to a darker time, Varian had no illusions that he could just waltz up to the archive and ask to be let into the vault. Even as Rapunzel pulled open the double doors to the clerk’s front room, Varian was roughly seventy percent certain they’d immediately tell him to get scarce. But as the room revealed itself to them, the concerns fled from his mind. 

Momentarily, Varian forgot himself. The room was only for archives and records, more of a foyer for the actual vault than a secure room in its own right. On the far wall, Varian could see the elaborate and heavy doors that protected the kingdom’s secrets, sealed tight in its frame. But it wasn’t the vault itself that slowed him in his tracks; it was the soaring ceiling, and the twelve-foot shelves that lined the walls. Rolling ladders granted access to the upper filing drawers. There must have been hundreds of them, each with organized catalog cards like the one in Rapunzel’s grip.

Several archivists were milling about the room, engaged in their own tasks. Whatever could be keeping them busy, Varian had no idea, but only one woman glanced up from a heavy oak desk when they arrived. She blinked at the sight of Eugene and Rapunzel, her eyes massive behind a pair of thick glasses. She only spared Varian a brief glance before bowing. 

“Your Highness,” she greeted, standing up from where she had been hunched over the desk. She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “What brings you to us?”

Rapunzel stepped forward without hesitation, either oblivious or unconcerned with whatever etiquette might have existed down here. “This,” she said, proudly holding out the catalog card for the Momentum Core. The woman blinked several times in rapid succession before leaning over the desk and squinting at the card, taking it carefully from Rapunzel’s fingers. 

“Where did you find this,” she asked as she looked the card over, moving her glasses around with her free hand as if doing so would help bring the card into focus. 

Rapunzel glanced over her shoulder at Varian, who had been looking around the room with quiet awe. The alchemist startled and cleared his throat. “In the, uh… the study in the east wing.”

The woman glanced up at him, this time with more deliberate focus. It dawned on Varian that she might not have reacted to his presence because she couldn’t clearly see who he was. “It shouldn’t have been there,” she answered flatly, though whether it was out of annoyance at Varian or disorganization in general, he couldn’t tell. Before she could clarify, she looked over her shoulder toward another clerk. “Daniel,” she called, “how did this end up in the east wing?”

The man in question--Daniel, apparently--didn’t bother looking up from the drawer he was organizing. “They’re obviously lying,” he called back, sounding about as flat and bored as was humanly possible. “It's probably from the castle library.”

The woman before them visibly bristled. “It’s the  _ princess _ , you stupid--” she cut herself short, remembering the company she had before her. Her cheeks flushed a deep red. “Ignore him, please,” she said awkwardly. “He’s just… like that. We have a duplicate system here, to ensure information is never lost. Let me find this card’s twin and confirm it’s here.”

“Thank you,” Rapunzel said with a genuine smile, graciously ignoring the other clerk, who still had not looked up from his task. The woman before them turned and hurried away, leaving the three of them standing at the desk. 

“Always a pleasant experience down here,” Eugene deadpanned, rolling his eyes. “Lots of vibrant,  _ fun _ personalities.”

“It’s fine,” Rapunzel said, elbowing him. “We can make friends later. Right now we just need that prototype.”

Varian’s stomach twisted. His nerves returned in full force. “Listen,” he began awkwardly, “I’ve been trying to research this thing for a long time, and I really  _ do _ think I stand a good chance of building a working Core. But Rapunzel, if it  _ doesn’t _ work, I don’t know if we should be telling too many people about it, right? At least, not until we know.”

“Yeah, see,” Eugene interrupted before Rapunzel could reply, “I don’t even know what  _ it _ is. An invention that can replace coal? How does that work?”

Varian glanced at him warily. He didn’t want to unpack the whole concept then and there, but Eugene had followed them down to the vault with almost no information. “It generates power on its own,” he said, picking his way through the briefest explanation possible. “Using coils of copper and magnets, which move back and forth under the same power they’re generating, and if we can find the right material for a catalyst, it can run perpetually.”

“Perpetually,” Eugene repeated slowly. “As in, forever? Like, once the thing starts working, it’ll never stop?”

“That’s what perpetually means,” Varian confirmed, unable to completely quash the sarcasm that always bubbled up when he got nervous. Eugene narrowed his eyes at him and reached to flick his ear, but the alchemist dipped to the side out of reach. 

“And the black rock fragments that we have might work,” Rapunzel added. “Since they’re unbreakable, and could withstand that constant energy exposure.”

Eugene glanced between them, a look of growing realization elevating his eyebrows. “Pittsford wouldn’t be too happy about that.”

“Pittsford can take a hike,” Rapunzel answered immediately, her tone just a bit too sharp for her companions to ignore. “If we can keep the kingdom warm through this winter, then it buys us the time we need to confer with the other kingdoms about aid. If we have time, we have a chance to avoid war.”

A chill crept across the back of Varian’s neck. For the second time that evening, he wondered exactly what had happened in that council meeting. 

“Would you be able to build enough of them to replace coal on such short notice,” Eugene asked, turning his gaze to Varian. The teenager gave a sort of half-nod. 

“It would require a number of them, but I think once I know how to build it, yeah. The trick will be the infrastructure.”

“We can redirect the military to help rig it up,” Rapunzel tacked on. She sounded so certain, as if she had already committed fully to the idea. It did nothing to help Varian’s wary nerves. 

“Well this is… good,” Eugene said slowly, finally catching up to what was going on. “That would be  _ great, _ actually. If you have plans for the infrastructure, I can direct my men to assist in building it.”

Varian smiled up at him, gratitude quelling some of his concerns. Compared to Rapunzel’s fierce positivity, Eugene’s expectations felt more grounded, more tempered. Here was a man who often relied on backup plans. 

The woman with the bottle glasses cleared her throat, appearing behind the desk with almost no sound. She held two catalog cards in her hand, one of them decidedly more scuffed and crinkled, indicating that it was the one they’d brought with them. Two cards in her hands was proof that the prototype actually existed, and for a moment, Varian felt a surge of relief and thrill shoot down his spine. 

Then he clocked her expression, and the buoyed spirits ebbed. 

“Unfortunately,” the woman said, her tone clipped and disapproving, “the item you’re looking for is no longer here.”

For a moment, Varian only stared at her, unprocessing. As her words settled in, the floor beneath his feet seemed to sink, pulling both him and his expectations down into the earth. That wariness, that worry that he’d gotten Rapunzel’s hopes up for nothing, crashed down on him hard.

“What do you mean,” Rapunzel asked, stepping forward and reaching for the cards. The woman obliged, handing both across the desk with an annoyed frown set on her face.

“It’s noted on the card that remained in our catalog,” she answered. “It sounds like it was stolen. Obviously from someone  _ before _ my time. That level of disorganization would never be tolerated now.”

Rapunzel shuffled the familiar card out of the way. The crisper of the two--the one that the archivist had just recovered--was covered in small precise writing and overlapped with a red stamp. Even from a few feet away, Varian could see that the stamp read  _ LOST. _

“... It was stolen,” Rapunzel confirmed, the volume of her voice halved. “By a clerk?”

Eugene stepped toward her, placing a hand on her shoulder and leaning forward. On autopilot, Varian stepped around to her other side, leaning into her personal space to see for himself. 

_ Item reported missing, _ the tight scrawl of handwriting read.  _ Believed stolen by team member. Royal guard investigating. _

It was marked with a date, some twenty years ago. Rapunzel lowered the card and looked back at the clerk before them. 

“Is there any indication of where it went,” she asked, a touch too desperate.

“I can confer with the guards,” Eugene offered, “reach out to the last captain to see if he remembers it.”

Varian was hardly listening. He took the card from Rapunzel’s slackened grip, examining it closely as though there might be some secondary note that read  _ Just kidding! _ or  _ Oops, wrong card! _

“With respect, your Highness,” the woman answered, “based on the date, it was not long after your own disappearance. The kingdom was… disorganized, back then.

Varian swallowed, and set his jaw. He could keep researching, could try out different alloys to see if he could recreate it without the prototype as a guide. But it would be months of trial and error, months of stabbing around in the dark, and they didn’t have that kind of time.

Thoughtlessly, he turned the card over, and blinked. 

“That’s a gentle way of putting it,” Eugene replied mildly. “Do you have any recommendations for where we look next?”

The woman looked at them with more pity than annoyance. “I would not hold out hope.”

“They found the guy,” Varian blurted. Three sets of eyes swivelled toward him, surprised. He held up the card for them to see. “On the back,” he explained. “It has a penal code and cell number. And the guy’s name.”

“Those are filing codes,” the clerk said with a frown, but Rapunzel and Eugene both turned their full attention to Varian. The princess took the card back, examining the discovery.

“Well, not to brag, but I think I know how the dungeons are organized,” Varian replied, a little too flat to be entirely non-confrontational. He pointed at the numbers for the others to see. “That’s an inmate number, that’s the cell number, and  _ that’s _ the guy who both applied to.”

The good news was that Varian didn’t recognize the name. He hadn’t met every other inmate while he’d been incarcerated, but some of the names that floated around the dungeons weren’t those of people you wanted to cross. Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t among those frightening names. That, or he wasn’t in the dungeons any longer. What was the sentence for stealing a non-functioning old prototype?

It hardly mattered. If they could find the guy who had stolen the prototype, they could find the prototype itself.

Varian looked up at Rapunzel and Eugene, and faltered. Both of them appeared to be caught somewhere between realization and dread. 

“What,” the alchemist asked with the hesitancy of someone picking their way onto thinning ice. 

“Stephen Caine,” Eugene read, glancing at Varian like he might know who that was. Varian looked back at him blankly. 

It was Rapunzel who took a deep breath, and clarified why the two of them suddenly looked so worried. She lifted her gaze to meet Varian’s, her jaw tight. 

“Stephen Caine,” she said carefully, “is Lady Caine’s father.”


	3. On Deaf Ears

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At a familiar haunt, Rapunzel, Eugene, and Varian begin their search for Lady Caine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is late, I have approximately 80,000 birthdays to keep track of in February and they eat up a lot of down time. I'm hoping to update this fic roughly once a week, give or take a few days, if knowing that helps anyone. Which, given that we're all stuck at home still, some semblance of structure might help. Who's to say.
> 
> Also: in the previous fic, Varian was stabbed in the right shoulder, not the left. Someone asked for some clarification on that. My bad.

Rapunzel tried to stifle her wince, lifting her hand to shield her eyes. “Maybe we should have agreed to his ‘good guard, bad guard’ idea.”

Varian took a long sip of his pint and watched the scene before them over the rim of his glass. “It would have been a disaster,” he replied.

“Yeah, well… This sort of is, too.”

If one didn’t know any better, the Snuggly Duckling looked as it always did: dirty, crowded, decorated with broken weapons and the concerning trophies of bar fights past. There were fluid stains dotted about, both bodily and otherwise, and the pervasive smell of stale beer and cigar smoke choked the air. A woman sat across the room at the piano, drunkenly attempting her way through an old shanty, her voice about as soothing as nails down the throat. 

It was an island of relaxation and familiarity, completely isolated from the woes outside its door. The patrons inside didn’t carry worry or dread on their shoulders; they were a stock entirely used to hardship and bad luck, and so pirates and bandits and burning crops didn’t bother them. It was almost enough for Rapunzel to forget what had brought them there.

Almost.

“I’m going to give you to the count of ten,” Eugene declared, his finger pointed to the ceiling as he glared down at a gentleman with tattoos all over his face, “to tell me what I want to know.”

“Oh, this outta be good,” an observing patron declared, leaning back against the bar. 

“Give him hell,  _ Captain,” _ another mocked, setting off a round of laughter among those paying attention. Eugene bristled. 

“Need I remind you, I’ve fought  _ Zhan Tiri,” _ he said sharply, turning his glare away from the man in question. His assertion was answered with more whooping and laughter. 

“Your wife fought Zhan Tiri,” a muscular woman corrected, waving a bottle of wine at Eugene as she spoke. 

_ “And  _ I helped stop the Red Curse,” Eugene added, raising the volume of his voice as if he could drown out the dissent by force. 

_ “He _ did that,” someone said, and though Rapunzel wasn’t sure who spoke, she saw a meaty hand point in the general direction of where she and Varian sat. “Face it, you’ll always be little Flynn Rider around here!”

More laughter. Eugene’s shoulders hiked up around his ears. Whether he was about to give up or start throwing punches, Rapunzel wasn’t sure; either way, she had seen enough. She braced her hands against the table and stood, her chair scraping back noisily. 

“You sure you don’t wanna give him another minute,” Varian asked, glancing up at her with a raised eyebrow. 

“I’m not finding this as fun as you are,” Rapunzel sighed. “And we don’t really have time.”

Varian didn’t argue. He didn’t get up to follow her, either, as she strode across the creaky old floorboards to the gathering near the bar.

“Alright, the next person to call me  _ little _ is getting a boot up the ass so hard your descendants will feel it,” Eugene threatened, reaching to push the sleeves of his red captain’s jacket up to his elbows. Rapunzel paused outside of the loose ring of bar patrons and politely tapped on a shoulder. When the man turned a scowl back at her, he startled, smiled, and stepped aside to allow her through. 

“Ten coin says Rogers can have him on the floor in under two minutes,” the woman with the wine bottle declared, as Rapunzel tapped more shoulders and received more nods and smiles and passage. 

“Twenty says he’ll be on the floor in under one,” another voice laughed loudly. Rapunzel passed through the crowd with only a few quiet ‘excuse me’s before arriving behind her husband. 

“Oh, I’ll take you  _ all _ on,” Eugene declared, flexing against the constraints of his rolled-up sleeves. “Whose first?”

“I’ll go first,” Rapunzel said politely, smiling at her partner as he spun around to face her, his manicured eyebrows jumping upward. He looked at her with some hybrid of embarrassment and alarm. She returned an apologetic smile and shrugged at him before looking around the loose circle of thugs. “We need to find someone, guys, and we don’t have a lot of time.”

The group heaved a collective sigh, disappointed that the threat of violence and the chance to make some coin from it had passed. Eugene begrudgingly unrolled his sleeves, straightening the cuffs with a bit too much force. 

“We’d help if we could, Princess,” one of the men said gruffly, shrugging with crossed arms. “But any decent criminal abides by the universal No Snitchin’ policy. We can’t help ya. It’d be bad business.”

Rapunzel’s smile, not entirely genuine to begin with, strained to reveal some of her desperation. It seemed to soften the expressions around her. “I understand, Knuckles,” she said carefully. “I don’t want to put any of you in a position where you lose the trust of your peers.”

She ignored the quiet “Are you kidding?” from Eugene, who spread his hands out at her like she was being unreasonable. “But we’re not looking to get anyone in trouble,” Rapunzel continued. “In fact, Lady Caine might be able to help us save the entire kingdom.”

More murmuring. Glances were exchanged throughout the gathering, coupled with shaking heads and downward gazes. After a too-long pause, the woman with the wine bottle leaned against the bar and shrugged. “Listen, Princess… You know we all love you. But kingdom politics… they aren’t really a concern of ours.”

The man who Eugene had initially been interrogating, whose face was covered in tattoos, turned back to where his drink sat on the bar. “War is good for the smuggling business,” he said, his voice surprisingly high-pitched. “We won’t cause it, but we won’t complain about it neither.”

Rapunzel felt her heart sink. She glanced at Eugene, who was looking back with something like resignation. The sentiment wasn’t dissimilar to something he had shared as they’d walked to the Snuggly Duckling earlier that evening.  _ You can get a lot of good heisting done when everyone is focused on a war. _

Still, Rapunzel had seen the good hearts that these thugs kept buried below tattoos and machismo. In some ways, they were a more honest group than the lot she’d come to know in the higher echelons of society. At least these thugs bore their fangs and scars openly, rather than hiding them beneath manners and poise. Briefly, she felt herself wishing the council had more in common with the patrons of the Snuggly Duckling. Then maybe she wouldn’t have been so blindsided by their plans for Varian.

“I’m not asking you to help the Crown, or even  _ me,” _ Rapunzel said, dropping some of her friendly facade in the interest of being sincere. “If we go to war, the citizens of Corona are going to be the ones who suffer. This winter is going to long, and cold, and  _ hungry _ for so many people. People who have nothing, just like all of you. People who will be desperate, who will sign up to go to war if it means two meals a day and shoes without holes in them! We’re not looking to arrest anyone, or get anyone in trouble. We’re looking to save  _ lives.” _

Her plea only resulted in more shuffling, more sideways glances and throats clearing. The seconds of silence ticked by like years, each one forcing her heart lower and lower. None of the ruffians looked her in the eye. 

And then, just outside the gathering of people, a new voice. “Old Corona will go first.”

Every down-turned gaze and eyepatch swivelled toward Varian. He stood quietly at the periphery of the group, his hand unconsciously rubbing his right shoulder where a stab wound had only recently healed. His eyes travelled from one ruffian to the next, more critical than vulnerable. 

“We’ve been dealing with hired bandits since August. They’ve taken  _ half _ of our food stores for the winter already. Do you know how an entire village survives a winter with only half the food it needs?” 

No one responded. Varian’s gaze drifted to the middle distance, the weight of the truth visible on his shoulders. “They don’t,” he said evenly. “It means that a lot of people will either starve and die, or become refugees in the capital. And if the kingdoms declare war? We’re right on the border. If an outside army breaches the wall, they’ll burn our homes first.”

Rapunzel’s stomach coiled. In all the council sessions over the last few months, the vulnerability of border villages had been made painfully clear, as did the kingdom’s reliance on the crops they produced. Even still, she couldn’t imagine how Varian felt about it. He’d been so stubbornly focused on restoring the boilers in the castle, in helping to research a solution for their problems. She wondered, not for the first time, if it had all been an excuse for him to channel his anxiety elsewhere.

Varian took a deep breath and stepped forward. The thugs parted around him immediately, creating a path for him to approach Rapunzel’s side. As he did so, he glanced uncertainly toward her before looking away, his expression hardening. “Everyone here has spent some time behind bars. And I’m willing to bet that the whole time you were locked up, you were hungry, and cold, and sick of feeling helpless. I bet if someone came to you and said they had a plan for breaking out, you’d jump at the chance.”

Heads nodded around the group. Rapunzel’s stomach coiled tighter, wringing out a kind of embarrassment she didn’t quite understand. The briefest flash of Andrew’s face passed through her mind’s eye before she forced it down. 

“Well, we’re here because we have a way to get out of this,” Varian said, his hard gaze once again moving from one face to the next, challenging them to argue with him. “We have a chance to help a lot of people feel warm again, feel  _ hope _ again. And you don’t even need to get off your asses to do it. You just need to tell us where we can find Lady Caine.”

In the wake of his argument, silence followed. This time it felt like ice, sharp and painful, and as it dragged on, Rapunzel couldn’t help but to slip her hand into Varian’s and give it a squeeze. After an uncertain moment, he squeezed back. He avoided her eye. 

“Come on, people,” Eugene groaned, clearly irritated that they remained unswayed. “Even  _ that _ doesn’t change your mind?”

“They won’t help you.”

For the second time, a new voice interrupted the tension. Rapunzel turned in tune with some of the thugs, her gaze landing on a weathered, bearded old man who sat perched on a barstool down the counter. He hadn’t been a part of the gathering, hadn’t even registered for Rapunzel when they had first stepped into the tavern. He swirled his pint and sighed, pausing only long enough to take a sip before he rotated on his stool to face them. 

“I remember you, boy,” he said gruffly, addressing Varian as if they were the only two people in the bar. “I remember the Saporian, too.”

Varian’s grip around Rapunzel’s fingers tightened, as did his posture. His expression was a carefully guarded shutter of emotions. He said nothing; Rapunzel squeezed back.

Gradually, the old man took a long breath and finished the last of his pint before setting it down on the bar with a resounding  _ thunk. _ “You don’t survive a life of crime by being sentimental toward others. Even if they want to help, their hands are tied. Reputations are a terrible thing to damage.”

He said this with a sharp look of disapproval turned toward the thugs that stood around Rapunzel and Varian, many of whom suddenly appeared to have remembered an important something they needed to go do. They all turned away, a few gruffing about a ‘crazy old man’. 

Painfully aware of how Varian was holding himself at her side, Rapunzel took a steadying breath and looked square at the old man. “Will  _ you _ help us, then,” she pressed, trying to push her sense of urgency into every syllable. 

The old man regarded her for a long moment before reaching up and wiping the beer foam from his mustache. “I can tell you how to get to where she is,” he said slowly. “But once you’re there, you’re on your own.”

“That sounds awfully similar to a ‘no’,” Eugene weighed in, stepping up along Rapunzel’s other side with his arms crossed over his chest. The gathering of thugs around them had made quick work of getting scarce, leaving the three companions as the stranger to their conversation. The old man grunted out something adjacent to a laugh. 

“It’s the only help you’re going to get in here,” he said. “And I ain’t offerin’ it to  _ you. _ I’m offering it to  _ him.” _

He nodded his chin to Varian, who had fallen quiet and still beside Rapunzel. He didn’t respond. 

“Any help would be appreciated,” Rapunzel answered on his behalf, trying to sound diplomatic. “Please.”

The old man glanced at her. He lifted his empty pint glass a few inches off the bar, and tapped it several times against the surface. At her side, Eugene groaned. She felt more than saw her husband roll his eyes, before he reached into his pocket and fished out a few coins. As if summoned by the smell of money, the bartender slid up alongside them and swept the change from his palm immediately, turning away to pour the man another pint.

While they waited for the head on the glass to dissipate, Rapunzel risked a peek at Varian. The alchemist was staring at the old man with recognition clear in his eyes, his jaw tight with discomfort. Only through sheer force of will did she quash the desire to ask him if he was alright. 

Before she could lose that battle, the pint slid across the bar and slopped some of its contents in front of the old man. The barest hint of a smile appeared under his mustache before he hoisted it and took a long sip. Tension mounted between Rapunzel’s shoulders as he did so, impatience beginning to gnaw at her. Eugene drew a deep breath to match her own. 

“There’s a door,” the old man said into his drink after a long pause, casual and gruff. “In the old Miller Trading Post down in the Gutter. Back room, behind a pile of stacked barrels. It’ll take you to Vardaros.”

For a moment, Rapunzel wasn’t sure she heard him right. “To… Vardaros?”

“Ah,” Eugene sighed. “A lying drunk. How surprising, for this place. We really  _ are _ desperate.”

“He’s not a drunk,” Varian said, speaking for the first time. His voice was quiet and strangely hoarse, but there wasn’t a shred of doubt in it. “He’s the Dealer.”

Rapunzel turned a questioning look toward him, but before she could ask what that meant, Eugene piped up. “... Wait. What?  _ Him?” _

The old man took another slow sip of his ale. 

“I remember you,” Varian continued, addressing the man directly. “Andrew tried to recruit you, too.”

When the old man didn’t respond, Eugene leaned forward to catch Varian’s eye. “I’m sorry, but you’re serious? This old man is the Dealer?”

“This old man is the Dealer,” the old man confirmed. He was studying Varian closely, who was studying him back in turn. 

Rapunzel looked between the three of them with an open question on her face. It was only with a deliberate shake of her head that she avoided the obvious distraction. The urgency of impending war burned at her heels and kept her focused.

“How does a door in Corona get us to Vardaros,” she asked, spreading her hands out to gesture that they all needed to stay on task. 

“Magic,” the old man said flatly, with no trace of humor in his tone. “The ‘door’ is actually a mirror, which is tethered to its twin in Vardaros. You can step through it and be there in a breath.”

A magic mirror. Rapunzel had her own slew of experiences with enchanted mirrors, all of which had born the likeness of Gothel and her vanity. Memories that had left Rapunzel reeling for weeks, and had convinced Cassandra to invest more aggressively in her betrayal. Rapunzel set her jaw and took a careful breath.

“And Lady Caine is in Vardaros,” she clarified, struggling to leave the memories behind her. The Dealer gave her a single nod, his expression impossible to read. 

“I couldn't tell you where,” he said. “But that’s where she fled to, after the black rocks poked holes in all the dungeon walls.”

“Hold up,” Eugene interrupted, stepping forward. “Is that how you smuggle goods? Magic mirrors?”

The Dealer didn’t answer. He regarded Eugene like an annoyance, though that hardly deterred the captain of the guard.

“I know how you work,” Eugene pressed. “You help people get out of dodge in exchange for absurd prices. What exactly do you think you can leverage out of the Princess of Corona, after all she’s done?”

“Eugene,” Rapunzel warned quietly, suddenly alarmed that the old man would retract his offer. But the Dealer only looked exasperated. 

“I already told you where to find the door,” he grunted. “If I expected something in exchange, I would have demanded it first.”

“And why would you help us for  _ free,” _ Eugene pushed, squinting at the man in open distrust. “Especially considering every other scumbag in here chickened out without hesitation?”

This, Rapunzel had to admit, was a fair point. If it was that bad for business to snitch on a fellow criminal, or if that much money was really up for grabs in the event of a war, why would he help them for free?

Instead of answering Eugene directly, the Dealer turned his focus back to Varian. The alchemist’s fingers slipped from Rapunzel’s grip, surprising her with their sudden absence. He reached for his shoulder, rubbing again at the old wound beneath his shirt. 

“You never should have been in there,” the Dealer said, once again addressing Varian as though they were the only people in the tavern. “A kid your age. And you still helped, even after all that.”

For a moment, Rapunzel only watched as Varian’s face shifted through a gradient of emotions, gears visibly turning behind his eyes. Had the two of them known each other in prison? Varian wasn’t exactly open about the things he had experienced while incarcerated, but near as she knew, he’d gone from isolation to being cellmates with Andrew, and that was it. How had he come to know the Dealer?

Something in his expression clicked, and Varian’s expression grew slack. “You were cursed,” he said quietly, his voice soft with realization. 

The old man looked down at his pint, studying it for a long moment. “They couldn’t prove how I helped some people get out of the kingdom, so they had to let me go. But I was in a holding cell down below the castle when the smoke rolled in.”

Images of a red bank of smoke shuttered across her mind’s eye. A darkened corridor flying by as she ran, horrified people in the foyer, her legs burning as she struggled up the stairs, only barely making it to her balcony in time. Rapunzel felt a chill creep down her spine, her eyes turning to find Eugene. He glanced back, his face a complex mask of memory in its own right.

The Dealer lifted his pint and took a long, slow drag of its contents. When he lowered it, he studied the pale golden dregs in the dim light and refused to look at them. “I don’t do charity,” he said evenly. “So let’s say that I’m repaying a favor. That Saporian bastard wasn’t too fond of me after I told him to take a hike, and you saw an end to him. So in exchange, you can use my door to Vardaros. But there’s a catch.”

Eugene groaned. “Of course there is,” he said quietly, his face the very picture of  _ ‘I knew it’. _

“You have three days,” the Dealer said, flatly ignoring Eugene. He looked up from his ale, first at Rapunzel and then Varian. “After that, I move the door. Can’t have its location getting out. If you miss it, you’re on your own getting back to Corona. ”

Three days. With no guarantee that they could track Lady Caine down, it hardly seemed like enough time. But they had friends in Vardaros, and Rapunzel was nothing if not a professional optimist. Steeling her nerves, she drew a breath to agree, but Varian spoke first. 

“Three days starting tomorrow,” he said, his voice still a touch raspy from nerves. 

The Dealer looked at him with a raised eyebrow, appearing surprised. “... Are you trying to negotiate with me, boy?”

Varian lifted his chin, taking a deep, uneven breath. “You don’t do charity, and I don’t like pity, so yes. If you owe me for Andrew, then you owe me for breaking the curse. Give us tonight to get ready.”

Rapunzel looked at Varian with open surprise, glancing between him and the Dealer uncertainly. For a moment, the old man and the alchemist stared one another down like they were squaring up for a fight. Then the Dealer broke into a smile and slammed his pint down on the bar. 

“Well that explains how someone so small has survived this long,” he laughed. “Fine. Your three days start tomorrow at nine. Gives me a chance to sleep in.”

A breath she didn’t know she was holding eased out of Rapunzel’s chest, her lips pulling into a gradual smile. That tight coil in her stomach finally began to unwind. They would get to Vardaros, find Lady Caine, and learn how they could find the prototype of the Momentum Core. They had been up against far more impossible odds in the past; this would be a piece of cake.

“See,” she said, reaching out for Varian’s hand and giving it another reassuring squeeze. “Told you coming here was a good idea.”

Varian only offered her a nervous glance. On her other side, Eugene hummed a single less-than-trusting note.

“A piece of advice, free of charge,” the Dealer said, adjusting his position on his barstool to get more comfortable. “There are people out there who  _ want _ a war. If you’re aiming to stop it, you’d best be careful to keep it quiet.” He glanced one last time at Varian, his eyes lingering where the alchemist’s hand rubbed anxiously at his shoulder. “By now, you should know your value in all this.”

Whether it was directed at all of them, or only Varian, Rapunzel wasn’t sure. The old man turned back toward the bar without another word, effectively ending the conversation. 

Beside her, Varian somehow looked smaller.


End file.
